Mike Pence accused Clinton’s campaign of an “avalanche of insults,” ignoring much of his running mate’s campaign strategy.
After his negative ads backfired in a failed 1990 campaign for U.S. House, Mike Pence swore off negative campaigning. But no one who has followed Trump’s 2016 campaign could think the same was true for Donald Trump.
Name-calling, misogyny, fat-shaming, immigrant bashing, Islamophobic racism, mocking of the disabled, and even insulting of veterans and a Gold Star mother have been a constant from day one of Trump’s presidential run.
As Trump insulted his way to the GOP nomination, Vanity Fair dubbed him “America’s insult comic in chief.”
Within the past week, Trump called his opponent “Crooked Hillary,” attempted to win over Sanders supporters by calling him “Crazy Bernie,” and smeared a former Miss Universe as “disgusting” — as well as demonstrating his mocking impression of Clinton stumbling when she was suffering from pneumonia.
Even Trump acknowledged that his frequently insults people, saying in a June legal filing that, “Calling a person ‘a real dummy’ or a ‘major loser,’ or saying that a person has ‘zero credibility,’ may be subjectively offensive to that person, but it does not change the legal reality that the statements — as offensive as they may be to the plaintiff — are protected opinion speech, and thus not defamatory as a matter of law.”
